


the air that tastes like fear

by enemeriad



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Drug Abuse, Gen, Past Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-08-30
Packaged: 2017-12-25 02:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/947721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemeriad/pseuds/enemeriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie deals with her anxiety in the only way she knows how: measuring out level doses of Adderall and dreaming of white knights and a cow named Dolly</p>
            </blockquote>





	the air that tastes like fear

Annie lives her life measuring moments in their relative anxiety level. 

Going to social pscyhology is a 8 because she's constantly being reminded that her  _affliction is not a predilection._ It's not her fault, they tell her, that she's fucked up seven ways to sunday.

Getting dressed in the morning in a 7 because she's got to make sure she's not  _matchymatchy_ but not clashing. It's terrible and calamitous and she gets clammy thinking about it.

Driving home is a 11. There's always the possibility of running into an axe murderer and being turned into a coke whore.

Attending study group rates, on the otherhand, rates between a 6 and infinity out of ten depending on what Jeff is wearing, whether Shirley is being anti-Jewish and whether Britta and Jeff are currently having sex and having post-coital arguments over the table. 

All in all, most of the time, she's finds that she's pretty relaxed. 

 

 

The first time she kisses Jeff, she wants to say it's just like magic. That the camera slows down microscopically, moves to an aerial view, pans out and then zooms in as Annie's eyes flutter closed and Jeff rests his forehead on hers only to say-

But yeah sorry, it doesn't go like that. 

It's more like trying to ignore the giant elephant in the room

-"sorry but Britta just said she loved me and I'm escaping my commitment issues so be my rebound girl please?"

She frowns, sighs, digs her pencil into her book and  _moans._

Everything is always so much better in her head. 

 

 

 

Britta doesn't  _know_ and Annie won't tell her but Jeff is being an absolute dickhead and she just has to keep the secret for five more seconds until she can leave the room and retreat to her home but honestly,  _honestly,_ Jeff is just a fucking-

"WE KISSED AGAIN."

She gloats in the frankly microscopic moment where Jeff's face twists up into that 'my god i knew this was going to happen but why didn't i plan for this apocalypse' and Britta got all 'am i going to be defensive or am i female prostigiator of freedom and liberty?'  

She's pretty sure Shirley's reassessing her validity in gaining entry to heaven. That makes two iredeemable sins. 

1\. Being Jewish (a factor she couldn't make Shirley redress even though she was  _born this way)  
2. _ Being a whore. (Shirley's word choice was flexible here. Harlot or strumpet worked too.)

Troy tries to fist bump Jeff while Abed twirks his head and then scribbles something down, muttering obscurely that this would mean a total redraft. 

It's Pierce who asks the most obvious question. 

'Why is the Dean leading around a cow?'

 

 

 

Jeff ignores her the rest of the day because she's obviously going to implode if he approaches her and Britta hates her so much that she can't even look at her andthen shes just SERIOUSLY~ freaking out about the fact that Abed is giving her weird looks

That's the reasoning behind the fifth Aderall she takes and she doesn't feel any calmner, only a little less frazzled and while her brain is still running at a million miles a minute at least it doesn't feel like she's going to blow a fuse. 

Or so she thinks.

'Annie!' The Dean calls out to her and rushes up leading a large cow with a blue bonnett. 'Annie, annie, annie. Just the person I wish I didn't have to talk to!'

'What's wrong Dean?'

'We've just had a minor mis _dedean_ or in the hall and the Ag Club let their cow loose. It broke the pen and I can't get it back into the classroom. Could you just.. look after it for a bit, I've just got to sort out the track team's sexual harassment claim. Won't take a minute, you know how those jocks are about having their bits touched.'

Annie mouth opens to form a resounding  _NO_ before the Dean has given her a rope and told her to: 'have a dairy good day.'

She's angry, a little bit  _pissed off_ because seriously, honestly, why does this happen every. single. time?

 

 

 

The second time, it's a non-attempt and the situation is made up entirely in her head.

It starts with Jeff's pat on her head and ends with her imagining a situation where his car breaks down on the way to a regional debate team meet and they're stuck on the side of the road and it gets cold and they find a old cabin and for some reason there's only a large bed and it's  _cold obviously_ so they end up making out on the down and it's so hot really and Annie's lips are parted and she's just imagining his arms and his perrr _fection_ when he-

'Annie, we need to talk about this.'

And the Jeff in front of her is neither shirtless nor panting. 

Disillusionment, she thinks, is a cruel business. 

 

 

 

 

 The talk doesn't go well. She yells. He does that 'I can't believe I kissed a nineteen year old' routine that she knows backwards and they end up back at square one. 

He returns to 'omg Britta' and texting her behind the rusty bleachers. 

Britta's cat like smile returns, Shirley tells her Michael sometimes makes exceptions with the kind of 'riff-raff' he allows into heaven and Abed just looks at her. 

'Not quite the way it's supposed to go.'

But he leaves her alone after she tells him that never ever ever ever will Firefly come back to tv. 

_Ever._

 

 

  

He finds her in the bar, curled up around a strawberry daiquiri she swindled from the bartender by flashing him her Costco membership card. It had either been the low light, or the view down her sweater but either way, he'd let her have it. 

He shrugs off his jacket and does a face (she's categorising them). This is his 'oh annie, why do i constantly need to give you these fucking stupid speeches that i fucking hate giving but give me an enhanced sense of superiority' face. 

She knows she hates it, hates the speech, hates him before he's even opened his exordium.

 

 

  {drinks daiquiris and tries not to dream of cowboys and white knights and other chidish crap. slips a adderall and tells herself that it's not like last time, not like crushing anxiety and underlying panic. she's fine, she's fine, she's...

 _slipping_.}

 

 

 

They make a fuss about her house.

'Annie, you live above a sex store.'

And it's all disguised as 'proprietry' but she knows that she's four blocks too close to Jeff's house and that he's her emergency and 'god annie this isn't right'.

Pierce offers, Shirley makes apologies and Britta resolutely says 'no' because let's face it, living in a commune isn't much better.

 

 

 

 

 She ends up Troy and Abeds and she's trying not to chuck a fit because 'hello we have another  _free_ room are you crazy like seriously' but it works because they have a dreamatorium and she basically uses it as a room to cry when the study sessions go from being a bearable 6.5 to Britta and Jeff making eyes at each other and she's choking on water and coughing up conjugations.

She tries, tries, tries not to meet Abed's eyes when he whispers 'do you like it better here in the real world?' because she's desperately trying to be an adult.

 

 

 

{ in short sweaters, and puppy dog eyes and mary janes, alice bands and white socks. she is young and small and beautiful and innocent and fuck it all, she'll be twenty in a month and it'll come crashing down. }

 

 

 Jeff doesn't meet her eyes, but she doesn't mind. She spends her time with Dolly. The cow. The one that Dean never 'came back to fetch' but she doesn't mind. 

Dolly moo's but she's alright. Doesn't make a fuss when Annie starts crying on her hide. 

Annie slips her a sugar cube every once in a while but it's fine. Cows, horses. It's practically the same thing.

 

 

Abed pauses the movie and sits in front of her looking determined.

'Annie, The Notebook is not quality entertainment.'

'It's helping'

'No, it's not. It really isn't. You're getting worse.'

'I'll be fine.'

'Nope.'

'Stubborn.'

'Trying to help.'

'Well it's not like that, I'm not needing help.'

She thinks that he's probably trying hard not to make a movie reference but then thinks better of it.

'He's not good enough for you.'

And it doesn't make it better, but it doesn't make it worse.

 

 

She wakes up in the middle of the night with a text.  _Stop being weird._ It's from Shirley. 

Or a drunk, penniless Britta but the sentiment is all the same. 

She meets them both for coffee (because that's the mature thing to do) and they chat and resolutely ignore the subject that starts with a capital J but it's fine, sort of. 

Eventually they talk about really inane things like the weather and the fact that Annie now has a pet cow. 

 

 

 

The third time she kisses him, it's not becase she wants to but because she has to. To win. 

( - except not really, she had a killer closing argument but this is better, more dramatic and it tastes like bitter coffee so- )

She presses down hard on her resolve, fingernails biting into her palms and then  _goes for it._  

Later, after the awkward pats on the head and the 'we can still be friends' she takes an adderall. 

Lets it dissolve quietly and thinks of all the situations where she being smart wasn't good enough. 

 

  

The whole thing is completely ridiculous, if she's being honest. Why on  _earth_ would anybody want to take over  _Greendale?_

But it's Chang and he's obsessed with himself and Annie finds herself gravitating towards  _sociopath_ before she realises that these  _children_ are his minions. It all seems so intensely weird that for a moment she forgets that Troy has signed himself up for a creepy air conditioning (cult) apprenticeship and that Britta is dressed up like a goth Lolita. 

But hey, whatever, they get their school back and it's completely great. Everyone is having a little party. 

 

  

(annie swallows white tablets like gulps of air. books simmer around her head. and she dreams of dreams about stanford.)

 

 

 Still, she keeps a happy face the fourth time he kisses her. 

This time, her eyes are trained on Abed, her hands are holding a certificate and the air smells like nothing. 

There is no anxiety that clouds her judgement or a string of hazy post-pubescent  _crushing._

'Congratulations' underscores exaltation and a commendable A minus but she doesn't crumple.  



End file.
